The story will reportedly focus on Lucius, the son of Lucilla, played by Connie Nielsen in the 2000 original. Lucius was also the nephew of Commodus, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who killed Russell Crowe’s Maximus at the end of the film.

After Gladiator made $460m worldwide and won five Oscars, including best picture, talk of a sequel has come up in the years since. Nick Cave took it upon himself to write his own take that would have brought back Maximus from the dead via the body of a slain Christian martyr.

“[Crowe] rang me up and asked if I wanted to write Gladiator 2,” Cave said to Marc Maron in 2013. “For someone who had only written one film script, it was quite an ask. ‘Hey Russell, didn’t you die in Gladiator?’ ‘Yeah, you sort that out.’”

Last year, Scott said the script was “on the shelf”.

After 2012’s Prometheus, Scott made his second prequel to Alien last year before telling the story of the Getty kidnapping in All the Money in the World. He is currently directing his first TV series, Raised by Wolves, a sci-fi tale of androids raising human children. He is also attached to a drama about the life of photojournalist Lyndsey Addario, played by Scarlett Johansson.